So powerful, the free opera streams. So powerful, 
the Navy ship treading to Manhattan, 

my students inventing words: afterwhen, leitmarsh— 
one renames herself Golden Bird. And I am 

thinking of you, lost friend—you in the new 
Pacific mountains and the wrought-iron herb 

garden, you for whom love is grief and truth 
a weapon you hand the enemy—barbed like 

the spores of a virus, infectious and exponential. 
Will I ever touch you again? A biologist calls me 

asking for meaning. I write in my garage
until a neighbor pulls down the door. Who am I 

to exist? By what right? We’re all going to catch it 
eventually, you say, and I want to take your head 

in my hands. I was supposed to be wiser. But this 
notion of deserving—to live, to breathe easy. 

Afterwhen I find my soul again, afterwhen I know 
what to say. Oh you, oh dear one, oh precious careful 

salve. You for whom love is a demand, whose name
is an incantation—you whose name I cannot say at all. 

The letter planes are all grounded. And in this long 
sabbath month, what words do we utter but prayer?